Pages

Easy Roses Quilt

A few years ago I saw a quilt in a magazine. The whole magazine was dedicated to women and for the research and cure of breast cancer. People, quilt shops, and women’s groups made and donated quilts and they were sold online and the proceeds went to find a cure for breast cancer.
One of the quilts in the magazine was so gorgeous I knew I had to try to make it. I had so much fun, too. Having lots of rose prints made it easy, too, since you need lots of different fabrics to make it interesting.
I cut out 4 varying sized sorta lumpy circles (oh, I know, like amoeba shapes) templates to make the large rose. Cut out 12” x 12” squares – 20 of them in varying shades of pink. Then I used the templates to cut out the petals of the rose alternating between light and dark fabrics so that each layer stands out. I put a dark shape for the largest, bottom petal. Then I alternate dark pink, then light pink, and so on. All of these are sewn on like raw edge applique which means no turning of the fabric. Just lay it down and stitch around the outside of the fabric. You just take a 12 in by 12 in square of fabric and slap on the biggest petal and sew it all around the edge. Then put the next shape on top of that and sew it down all around the edge. Keep going until it looks “finished”. In the middle of some of them I cut out a single rose from rose print fabric and stitched it right on top.
I even used doilies on some of the layers.
Oh, the leaves! Yea, well I just cut out some leaf shapes and put two with right sides together, stitched around the leaf part, turned it rightside out, ironed it, and put it underneath the first and largest rose piece hiding the raw edge under the rose piece. I didn’t stitch them down so they can “flop around”.
Wasn’t this fun? Would’ve been great if I had actually finished it but it has been folded up for 3 or 4 years now awaiting finishing. It’s badly in need of ironing which I tried to work around when taking the pictures. In fact, I had to take the quilting pins out of it to take these pictures, too.
Best wishes, all. Linda